


Êlle Aurè li Bia Bouquèt

by Adsilaflower



Series: Remember The Women When It's All Said And Done, For They Will Be The Ones Who Tell You What's Won [2]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Absence of Belgian Waffles, BAMF Women, Bastogne, Belgium (Country), F/M, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Nazis, Nurses, Pretentious art friends, Renee LeMaire is not your angel, Women Being Awesome, Women in WWII, World War I, World War II, interwar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-08
Updated: 2017-12-08
Packaged: 2019-02-12 01:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12948147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Adsilaflower/pseuds/Adsilaflower
Summary: She has seen twenty six years and one month when the Nazis invade.“Baise les Nazis” she shouts in the street that night. Everyone around her is panicking, preparing for the invasion, and people are clogging the streets, desperate to get away but she cannot bring herself to care.





	Êlle Aurè li Bia Bouquèt

This is what Renée knows:

     She is born in Bastogne.

 

This is what Renée does not know:

     She will die in Bastogne.

 

Here is what Renée knows:

            She has two sisters, a mother, and a father who owns a hardware store. She is born in April of 1914, months before the start of the War to End All Wars.

She does not remember Moritz Von Bissing.

She does not remember the years of occupation.

She does not remember the rape of her country.

     But she grows up with the war trailing after her, every step takes. Buildings in ruins, mines left unexploded in fields, craters dotting the woods, trenches marring farms, men with eyes that don’t see, missing limbs, children without mothers, friends without fathers. The Schlieffen Plan dismissed her country a nothing more than a minor obstacle, one that could be overcome in mere weeks. She grows up with war on her sleeve.

Here is what Renée knows:

     She may be Belgian, but she also Walloon to her core, and she has little taste for the Flemish to the north. Wallon is her first language, but her French is perfect, and she speaks not a word of Dutch, something she takes pride in, but it is more hindrance than help when she goes north for her nursing degree. She hates Bruxelles, it is dirty and busy and half the vendors refuse to speak French, and they call out remarks to her in guttural flemish, and it is nothing like home, but it is 1934, and a depression is clawing at every available job, so she stays. Nursing was always her passion. She graduates with full honors and gets a job at St. Elizabeth’s hospital. With her first paycheck, she buys a white tablecloth with lace trim and new chairs for her kitchen. With her second paycheck, she buys a pair of bright yellow heels with blue flower appliqué. The next night she goes down to the town hall and dances until her feet hurt. There is one boy with blue eyes and another with green, and she trades off with them until the musicians pack up. After the third night, the one with the green eyes brings offers to walk her home. His smile when she says yes lights up his eyes and maybe Bruxelles _-Brussels-_ isn’t as bad as she thought it was.

Here is what Renée knows:

     The boy with green eyes becomes Sebastian and Sebastian becomes the boy who brings her flowers when he meets her for lunch between her shifts. Sebastian is charming and funny and _dutch,_ flemish with a French mother who had enough sense to name him Sebastian but still, he is from the north. “Holy Shit,” she thinks, her sisters are never going to give her a _break_. Sebastian smiles when she cooks breakfast in the morning and she smiles in return when he cooks dinner.

Here is what Renée knows:

     She has been at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital for 4 years when Anna shows up. She is seven years younger, barely more than a girl, and knows nothing more than what has been in her textbooks, but she quickly becomes her favorite. Their bond only grows stronger when they speak of home during shift breaks and realize they share a home, and she realizes that Anna wears Bastogne as a cloak of purple, same as her.

Here is what Renée knows:

     She introduces Sebastian to Anna in lieu of her family and 6 minutes in she realizes she has made a terrible mistake because Sebastian loves art and Anna loves art and they have only known each other for _six minutes_ and they are already arguing about cubism and dadaism. Forget telling her sisters she dating a northerner because this, this is so much worse. It is in her favor that this bar has the good stuff.

Here is what Renée knows:

     Sebastian makes the perfect cup of coffee, not too weak, not too strong. The first sips she takes almost makes her want to propose on the spot. That night, when they break open a new bottle of wine, Sebastian tells her he felt the same way when he first tasted her Stofé. His kisses are not always sweet like Stofé, sometimes they’re hot and heavy and fire like geneva.

When she dreams of her future Sebastian is there now.

Here is what Renée knows:

     She has seen twenty-six years and one month when the Nazis invade.

“Baise les Nazis” she shouts in the street that night. Everyone around her is panicking, preparing for the invasion, and people are clogging the streets, desperate to get away but she cannot bring herself to care.

She drinks herself into a stupor that night, toasting to as many variations of “Off with the Boches” she can think of while Anne slowly works through a sherry on the seat across from her. She can’t get in contact with Sebastian, every time she calls the operator tells her the line won’t connect. The other nurses of the ward have already slumped off to sleep, leaving the two of them to ruminate together. There are 56,000 Jews in Belgium, and she wonders how many will survive.

Here is what Renée knows:

     She takes her holiday in Bastogne because Sebastian is somewhere where she cannot be. At first, she hated him, when she learned that the reason she couldn’t call him was because he fucked off with the British at Dunkirque so he could “live to fight to free Belgium”. She ripped up the flowers he had left in her apartment because he left and she was still there.

She is visiting family when the siege begins, when les Americains begin knocking on doors for help. She is a nurse, and she grabs her coat as she follows the soldiers out the door. She is equal parts elated and terrified when she sees Anna at the aid station. She wants to take her by the shoulders and shake her, tell her to run, to leave while she still can, doesn’t she understand what the Nazis will do to her if they are overrun?

“Bonjour”

“Salute”

Well, that’s that.

Here is what Renée knows:

     Supplies are dropped in parachutes, and men run out to bring them inside amidst bullets flying overhead. The commanding American physician recycles the parachutes by cutting the fabric into bandages, but she takes some before he can and hides them in her bag, keeping it for herself. She will give it back if they need it, but for now, it stays hidden. It is enough fabric for a wedding dress, and she will marry Sebastian after the war. Who knows how long rationing will stay in effect. Sometimes, at night, she holds the fabric to her chest, dreams about life after the war. Two children, both girls, but maybe a boy after they grow up, bread baking in the oven, and warm summer days. Sebastian is a dashing man who doesn’t know pain in her dreams.

Here is what Renée knows:

     She means what she said to the American medic, that what she has is no gift, that she never wants to tend to another man ever again, that she would rather work in a butcher shop. She hears the whispers that follow her as she makes her rounds, the men who call her the Angel of Bastogne, but she is just a nurse, a nurse who cannot take it anymore and she almost throws up after a man dies with her hands clamped around his spine.

Anna is better at this, Anna sets breaks and ties parties and stitches up gaping wounds and amputates limbs without hesitation. She does everything to keep the men alive even if they treat her like dirt. Renee wants to shake them until their teeth fall out and scream-

“You are dying! Why does it matter what colour she is?”

The American tells her that her hands are calming and she wants to cut them off.

Here is what Renée knows:

     She will die in Bastogne because no one will escape alive. She can feel it in her bones and in her soul and when she hears it, the silence, the quiet before the storm she realizes that she will die in Bastogne.

_The closer a bomb is, the less time you have to run._

Here is what Renée does not know:

     John and Anna will pull her body from the destruction surrounding it, brush off the dirt that graces her face. They will wrap her in the parachute she would have used for her wedding dress and give her to the family that survives and her mother will collapse, two children dead in two weeks. She will be buried underneath the rubble that is her home. Six months later Sebastian comes to Bastogne and the first meeting between the LeMaires and Sebastian Maes occurs without Renée.

 

Here is what Renée does not know:

     She will be remembered as the Angel of Bastogne.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Information about Renée LeMaire is hard to come by since she died before she could really tell her story. Like Anna, I have added a lot in to her story in order to make it more engaging.  
> Historical Notes:  
> Belgium is a very divided country, split between Flanders in the north and Wallonia in the south. Since Renée was born in Bastogne she was most likely Walloon, a probably spoke a French dialect called Wallon as her first language before learning traditional french.  
> There really were 56,000 Jews in Belgium before the invasion, many of them refugees from Nazi Germany.  
> Bruxelles is Brussels, and along with being the capital is the country's most divided and largest city, and there are different quarters of the city for one to live depending on whether you speak dutch or french.  
> The German/Prussian occupation of Belgium during WWI really is called the Rape of Belgium, and Belgium itself was home to some of the worst fighting, so Renee would have definitely grown up surrounded by a country recovering from war.  
> Store is a Belgian cheesecake, gevena a Belgian liquor.  
> The title comes from a traditional Walloon song called Li Bia Boquet, and is about a bride on her wedding day.


End file.
